Enewsletter

Enewsletter • April 16, 2008

Notes from Vegan
Outreach

Jon Camp's Spring Tour Roundup

Last
Friday night, I returned from my
68-day college leafleting tour.
With the help of 49 volunteers,
45,804 booklets were handed out
in VA, TN, AR, TX, OK, NM, AZ, CO,
WY, KS, MO, IA, IL, WI, KY, and
WV. What I saw on the road was similar
to what other VO leafleters continue
to see on a daily basis -- scores
and scores of individuals sincerely
considering the plight of farmed
animals and making changes.

But seeing the tangible results
of leafleting also left me longing
for what could be if more were to
get involved with this outreach.
How great it would be if we had
even a weekly presence in every
major metropolitan region and college
town in the US and Canada! And for
the regions where one or two individuals
were active, what if 5 or 10 or
20 were to leaflet regularly?

As vegans, we see that by simply
abstaining from meat, eggs, and
dairy, we can reduce a great deal
of needless misery with one fell
swoop; we are sometimes dumbfounded
that others don't grasp this. But
the same holds true for activism.
By getting out for even one hour
a week, we have the potential, over
time, to spare millions of animals
a lifetime of suffering.

Cesar Chavez once stated that,
"Talk is cheap...It is the
way we organize and use our lives
everyday that tells what we believe
in." It's often easy to get
daunted by the prospects of making
substantive change for animals.
But I see on a daily basis that
change is not only possible, it
is inevitable when -- and only when
-- we make it happen. Each one of
us, through our time and/or financial
contributions, can help significantly
push the ball forward for animals.
Please let
us know if there is
anything we can do to help you get
involved in doing this important
work that needs to be done.

Rockin' for the Animals

Consider adopting a concert this
summer and continuing to reach new
hearts and minds with the message
of compassion. Please take
a look at our ‘veg-friendly’
concert list, and let us know which concert(s) you can cover.
We’ll supply the booklets and the
helpful advice. Rock on!

Evil Product of the Week

Matt: Trader Joe's vegan chocolate
chip cookies sit in the cupboard,
taunting me all day, calling out
that I should just give in and eat
the entire delicious bag. Bad cookies!
Bad!

Notes from All
Over

Egg Industry Update

The egg industry in 2007 saw the
"largest single year decline
in per-capita consumption in the
last 10 years. Expectations for
2008 per-capita consumption are
for levels to once again be historically
low." Page
8 of pdf.

In Vitro Meat Update

Wired:
"To produce the meat we eat
now, 75 to 95 percent of what we
feed an animal is lost because of
metabolism and inedible structures
like skeleton or neurological tissue,"
Jason Matheny, a researcher at Johns
Hopkins and co-founder of New Harvest,
a nonprofit that promotes research
on in vitro meat, told Wired.com.
"With cultured meat, there's
no body to support; you're only
building the meat that eventually
gets eaten."

New
York Times: My
colleague Mark Bittman wrotea
fine piece recently
about the greenhouse-gas consequences
of conventional meat production.
Others have explored the environmental
and ethical impacts of factory
and feedlot farming. Manufactured
meat, in theory, provides an end
run around these issues. ... [O]ne
could envision someday a model,
say, of a solar-powered facility
in southern California or Singapore
basically turning sunlight and desalinated
seawater into growth medium and
then tons of cruelty-free, sustainable
nuggets of chicken essence.

Lightning Round

Notes from Our
Members

It was great leafleting
at Kent State University. More than
half the students thanked me for
the booklet, and there were several
who said they had received the booklet
in the past and were now
vegetarian or vegan.-Steve Kaufman, M.D.,
4/7/08

At
Dalai Lama "Seeds of Compassion"
events in Seattle, Jessica Dadds,
Anu Garg, Yvonne LeGrice, Emily
Pepe, and Adrienne Youmans joined
us in distributing over 10,000 Vegan
Outreach booklets! Dave Bemel and
Action for Animals were there (they
handed out 3,300 on Friday!), as
well as Rachel Bjork, David, Debbie,
and Chuck from NARN. What a great
experience! We highly recommend
future
Dalai Lama events,
especially if he's speaking in a
big arena. We'd also like to plug
participation at these big events.
While we did great yesterday, with
five more volunteers and 5000 more
leaflets, our total would have been
that much higher.
As
exciting as it was to hand out so
many brochures in one weekend, the
very best aspect of this trip was
our camaraderie and the knowledge
that we are part of a positive movement
that is larger than ourselves.
It was wonderful for those of us
in Oregon to finally meet the Seattle
folk and spend time bonding with
them over our shared concerns for
the animals.-Nick Lesiecki, Emily
Pepe & Anu Garg, 4/13/08

Today was a fun day
of outreach, with
lots of high school students from
a nearby high school coming through
John Jay Square on their lunch break.
I could tell that the school has
been leafleted heavily before, because
I heard from students who had leaflets
from the last time someone (Jenna)
was there! A teacher from Beacon
H.S. stopped by and was excited
to see that I was leafleting, and
said that after the lunch break,
many of his students were showing
him the leaflets. He wants to order
some for his classes!-Eileen Botti, 4/10/08

It
was Agriculture Awareness Week
at North Carolina State University,
where they displayed live animals
while grilling dead ones, and had
many signs promoting the meat, dairy,
and egg industries. The NC Farm
Bureau, local Farm Bureaus, industry
trade associations, and others sponsored
the event. Unfortunately, but not
surprising, very little of the event
was devoted to plant agriculture.
After initial resistance from NCSU,
our campus animal rights group,
Students
Promoting Animal Rights Collectively
secured a table in the brickyard
for the event. We tabled from 9am-5pm
each day to present the viewpoint
of the animals -- the victims of
these exploitative and profit-driven
industries. We displayed posters
on sandwich boards around the brickyard
to expose the reality of animal
agribusiness and promote veganism.
Thousands of Vegan Outreach pamphlets
were handed out, and media coverage
was surprisingly positive!-Brandon Becker (at
right; photo by Loren Hart), 4/11/08

A few days ago, I
helped our mail carrier unload a
huge shipment of leaflets. He was
curious, so I gave him an Even
If. I saw him again today,
and he told me, "I read your
booklet. It was thoughtful and well
written. It didn't scare people
off in the first two pages like
the old animal rights info, and
it presented some good solutions
to the problem. I'm going to pass
it on to one of
my kids."-Fred Tyler, 4/7/08

Kurt Mantheiy leaflets at the
University of North Texas; photo
by Jon Camp.

At the University of
Pittsburgh, one girl
ran up to me saying "You are
right! You are so right! You are
right! You are so right!" She
had read through the booklet and
was blown away and was intent on
going veg. She also took booklets
to share with friends. We had other
good experiences too: one woman
said she would try her best to go
vegetarian; one teacher took a bunch
of booklets for his class; etc.
-Nick Cooney, with Vic
Sjodin, 4/9/08

Vegan Outreach is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing the suffering of farmed animals by promoting informed, ethical eating.